Checkmate

by Dorothy Dunnett

  It was clear how the King of France intended to enter the Cathedral, but not so clear what route was set apart for Messrs the Aldermen, Receivers and Controllers, not to mention their mules.

  They tried the doorway near the Church of St Marine and were hustled out by a gentleman usher. To enter the choir, in the end, they had to return to the great door and lower themselves, with a manful absence of imprecation, on to the long bridging ramp which joined the platform at the west door to the furthest interior of the Cathedral.

  Like the gallery erected outside, it was laced with leaves and floored with Turkey carpet and so made pleasant walking except that, in the end, it was discovered that the high chairs to the left of the choir, rightfully those of the Town, had been occupied already by Messieurs of the Counting House and the heads of Justice, leaving only the inferior seats near the door, into which the Town sullenly squeezed itself. The right of the chancel, thick as a poppyfield, was filled with the Court of Parliament in scarlet robes lined with velvet, their furred hats laid on their shoulders. And waiting before them, in a dazzle of massy church gold and painted statuary, was the Reverend Father in God Eustache du Bellay, Bishop of Paris, in his stiffest pontifical habits, flanked by his clergy and awaiting, with grave inclinations of recognition, the arrival of the royal party.

  The shuffling footsteps, the long lines of filtering newcomers, the dog-eared flutter of grouped genuflections slowly ceased and the ground-bass of cautious greeting rose to a rumble of titillated self-conceit and excitement. At ten o’clock the noise, suddenly dwindling, allowed to be heard the squeak and the thud of the Swiss Guard with their tambour and fifes, coming to take up their posts by the platform. The Bishop, in a stately glitter of embroidered vestments, glanced about and set off for the porch with his clergy, the Cathedral Cross carried before him, and flanked by two choirboys with lit tapers in silver candlesticks.

  The church became rather silent, so that the noise of the crowds in the parvis could be heard, like heavy breathing outside the west door. The sound of trumpets, far away, floated like dandelion quills through the open doors and athwart the south wall of the building. It was eleven o’clock, and the Royal procession had left the Bishop’s Palace and was proceeding along the covered gallery to the Cathedral.

  To the people filling the parvis and every window and rooftop about it, the Court appeared as a ruching of gold, slowly drawn through a lattice of greenery. Far ahead of the rest, in cloth of gold to his feet, the Duke de Guise arrived on the platform and cleared it, with a sweep of his arm, of all those who obscured the crowd’s viewpoint. A great arcade of sound burst from the people, and hard on its heels, a striving outcry of music from trumpets, clarions, hautboys, flageolets, viols, violins, cistres and citterns as the musicians came forth, massed in yellow and red and threw every pigeon flock skywards. Then the procession arrived, and moved from the bridge to the balcony, filling it.

  The crowd knew everyone. The cheering overlapped, tossed like faggots of spray into an air stinking of garlic and cheap wine and poverty. They knew the princes with their jewelled berets and doublets and breeches slashed and ribboned and pebbled with gems. They knew why Piero Strozzi was missing, with another attack of catarrh. They knew the bishops, archbishops and abbots, the Cardinals and the Papal Legate, the Cross and the Eucharist carried before him. They knew every famous face of the hundred gentlemen: the King’s gentlemen of the chamber, the marshals, the captains, the Chevaliers of the Order, the high officers of State. It pleased them to recognize the war leaders and shout the names of their victories. They did not omit their conspicuous favourite, the angelic Russian for whom the bâton of a Marshal of France was surely waiting.

  From the end of the procession, Philippa heard Lymond’s name roared and felt her heart hammering. Before her was a thicket of nervous princesses, with in front of them Madame Marguerite, the Queen of Navarre and the Queen of France, led by the Prince of Condé who, though poor, was a prince of the blood and occasionally had to remember it.

  Ahead of them was Mary, with the King on one side and the Duke of Lorraine on the other. Philippa could see her crown blaze in the sunshine as she stepped round and on to the platform: it was made of gold clasped with every known gemstone and was a good deal better than the crown the Commissioners had failed to bring from Scotland, having a single jewel worth 500,000 écus in the middle.

  In profile, she looked perfectly composed, with her auburn hair bound neatly round it, and her long, slender neck with its collar of jewellery. She was dressed in the colours of Scotland: a white robe, over which fell the difficult train in the same green-grey blue as the hangings, made heavy with jewels and embroidery. It wound successfully round the last of the staging and up, Philippa was happy to see, to the platform. The Dauphin, with the King of Navarre and his two younger brothers, preceded her.

  They all came to a halt in the heart of the platform, in the hazy lichenous dusk of the canopy. The end of the procession, scurrying, found its position. Cardinal de Bourbon faced the bridal pair, and with the whole of Paris below, breathless, watching, began to utter the words of the marriage service.

  Philippa listened.

  Take thou this wilful and lovely young woman, who is the realm, proud and ancient, of Scotland. Take thou this backward and impotent boy, in whom runs great Gaul’s royal blood-line. And join them in holy matrimony, whose object is to glorify God, to bear fruit, and to shun adultery.

  And who was she, to mock such a marriage, when her own had used the rites of the church for a purpose not one whit more tender? When the union contracted in Turkey had produced neither heirs nor peace nor freedom from lechery …?

  Take thou this young man and this girl of different nations who, unmoved on the day of their marriage, may discover in years to come a bond beyond man’s understanding. And let it come to them in such a form that they may keep it.…

  One is permitted to weep at a wedding. There, already ranked on the platform, were the nine Scottish Commissioners, who were not tearful, but whose mien was not that of rejoicing. And on the other side, where she did not have to look to discover him, was Lymond her husband, with the same griefs contained in his stillness.

  She had made no effort to withdraw from tomorrow’s process of annulment. It made no difference now.

  The King of France’s ring, slipped on the bride’s finger, made her Reine-Dauphine of France. The Bishop of Paris, moving forward, began to intone a long prayer. The Duke de Guise, signing irritably, contrived to move a number of straying figures out of the public’s line of vision.

  Soon the heralds at arms would come with sacks of coins and throw them from the three sides of the platform, roaring Largesse: an act long known to cause hysteria, injury and sometimes even death in the ensuing stampede but which no one, crown or people, dared tamper with. Then turning, the procession would pick its way into the church where Mass would be celebrated in the same style, said the Master of Ceremonies, as all simple brides use for the sacrament.

  Once, de Chémault had been a good friend to Francis in London. If she had been a good friend to Francis … she would have sent him to Russia. Anything was better than this. Anything was better than the condition which could lead a man to repeat, as he had done that night at Fontainebleau, the words of another, refused by the grim boatman Charon:

  J’irai donc, maugré toy, car j’ay dedans mon âme

  Tant de traits amoureux et de larmes aux yeux

  Que je seray le fleuve, et la barque, et la rame.

  *

  The wedding banquet in the Bishop’s Palace followed. Messieurs of the Town, who were not invited, dined by prior arrangement in a small house near the parvis of Notre-Dame, which proved inconvenient. After, they made for a bigger house on the Pont au Change, where, until their next assignation, they were able to pull off their robes and take the air over the water.

  The royal party, embedded in cloth of gold upon litters, horses and coaches emerged from the banquet and proceeded to the
Palais de Justice, making a short detour by the Notre-Dame bridge on the way. Attempting to follow the change of route, the spectators in the rue de Neuve Notre-Dame and the rue de la Calende emptied themselves into the rue du Marche-Palus, a runnel four feet wide in which three drains met, with insalubrious consequences. The royal party, having crossed the Pont Notre-Dame, proceeded a short way downriver among other and cleaner crowds, and then recrossed to the Palais de Justice by means of the Pont au Change, passing messieurs of the Town, who cheered, anonymously.

  There were men in the crowd who remembered the wedding of old King Henri, when the streets were draped with tapestries and carpets hung from every window, and when the Fountain of Ponceau flowed with wine and hippocras. There were younger men who remembered other Triumphs and Ceremonial Entries, when choirs of children had sung at the Hôtel-Dieu and on the Parvis; when the streets were spanned by great Arches with living statues, and at every corner there had been stages, with plays enacted upon them, or nymphs waiting with gifts, or gods with heroic poetry.

  For the Scotch wedding, it appeared, none of this was considered suitable, when (so the Keeper of Seals let it be known) the country was still at war. There had been largesse, as was right. The belltower of the Palais had led the carillons. There had been a salute, somewhere, of cannon. But even the bird-keepers of the Pont au Change had not been discreetly visited, as was normal, and assured of the King’s concrete gratitude if and when they made the traditional gesture when the royal party crossed to the Palais.

  The traditional gesture consisted of the release into the air of two hundred dozen birds of all species. Given generous warning, one was assured at least of providing a spectacle. That Sunday, as the bride’s procession set foot on the planks of the bridge, the bird-keepers opened their cages; and as peculiar an assortment of bird life ascended the skies as could be seen anywhere outside a bestiary.

  The air blackened with wings of all colours, and then blanched with the fruits of their disquietude. On the epaulette of the Archer by Philippa arrived a small portly creature in green, which puked; remarked, ‘Hé, petit capitaine de merde!’ and whirred off as he reached up to throttle it.

  She was gazing after its flight when a hand, thrust through the crowd, pushed something into her fingers.

  The hand had gone before she whirled to look for it. She rode on, gripping her prize, and smiling affably to the jostling thicket of pink, sweating countenances. Then, tilting her palm, she saw what was in it.

  A page of paper, tightly balled, bore traces of broken writing. Unfolded a little, it showed her it contained a message. Unfolded a good deal more, it told her that the message was from Leonard Bailey.

  At last, on the edge of the river, had been granted the stay she was waiting for.

  Chapter 8

  L ‘ire insensée du combat furieux

  Fera à table par freres le fer luire.

  As the Kings of France, like the early Christians, were always wed in the porch of their church, so they always followed the Mass with a public banquet at the Marble Table of the Palais de Justice, attended by the courtiers, the courts of Parliament, Messieurs of the Town and Messieurs of the University, together with the better-bred nationals of whatever nation had received the happy portion of a French spouse.

  By five o’clock, when Messieurs of the Town had walked to the Palais and had been allotted their seats below the royal covers, the going price for the password ‘Brede and Ale’ was three écues sol and still rising, and the accent in the strangers’ benches was far from predominantly Scottish. There began, as the ushers realized this, some heavily muffled engagements.

  The gates were fastened. The great seigneurs who were not princes of the blood entered and took their places. There was a flourish of trumpets, and the bridal company paced through the double carved doors and seated themselves, stiff and smiling as Holy Week images behind the famous table, the longest, the broadest, the thickest single slab of unbroken marble in history. Daniel Hislop, sitting four tables down from this glory, treated Adam over Jerott’s suffering head to a sequence of brilliant strictures, based on a disingenuous recollection of the court of Tsar Ivan of Russia.

  The doors opened again to emit a roll of drums and a squall of trumpets and clarions, announcing the forthcoming service. It entered, carried under napkins by two hundred pairs of gentlemanly hands and preceded by the twelve masters of the royal households, who in turn were led by the heralds of France and Scotland in their tabards, two by two, and by the dazzling cloth of gold presence of the Duke de Guise, his bâton of office before him.

  On the handsome, scarred face of François de Guise was a smile of perfect complacency. Today, he was Grand Maître d’Hôtel to the King, and had filched at last the Constable’s coveted office. Today, without complaint, interference or open impediment, his niece had received with the ring on her finger the rights to three kingdoms. Through her he had laid at the feet of this king the priceless gift of the nation of Scotland, and the larger claim which that throne embodied. Through her, when the time came, the Duke himself might govern three nations, and his brother the Christian cosmos.

  The vessel of such superb statecraft, fifteen years old, with the brilliant crown held blazing over her head, received smiling his careful deference. Tiredness hollowed the hazel eyes, but the flush and glitter of pride and excitement still drove aside all awareness of strain. She was the shrine, the fountain, the flame which drew all men’s eyes: praise and envy and adulation settled clinging upon her like garlands. Above her hung the French fleur de lis and the lion of Scotland. Her arms and those of France laced through the blue and gold vault of the ceiling. The painted file of arched windows, blazing with the late sunlight drenched the pillars with jewels and burned upon the riches of her subjects in flecks and prisms of colour, bright as soap-bubbles.

  Later, when the third service was over and the cressets were lit, the buffet was opened with all its ten shelves laden with the gold plate of France, and the King lifted from it a great quart-pot of red gold for the heralds to carry from table to table, calling largesse. Then the Reine-Dauphine of France and Queen of Scotland was glad, for she could cease appearing to eat a meal for which she had no appetite. Soon, grace would be said and the tables drawn and she could move, and laugh and dance, and be admired all over again.

  The demoiselles of honour, who had not been married today, looked more tired than she was. She spoke, twice, to Madame la comtesse de Sevigny, and finally obtained the rosewater and napkin she wanted.

  Then the tables were lifted, and the austere replicas of past Presidents, Counsellors and advocates, peering down from the carved pendants and ogives, could see the black and white marble floor bare, where by day the merchants’ booths stood, and where the Procureurs of the Court leased their benches. And round the room, in blue and ducat-gold stood, without voicing opinion, the statues of the Kings of France, from Pharamond to Charles IX; the spiritual with arms and eyes uplifted, the less commendable with hands and heads lowered. The Dauphin, his wide-cheeked face suet-coloured, was led away, briefly, by his gentlemen.

  The Queen did not want to leave, even temporarily. It was Madame de Valentinois, exerting incredible tact, who finally persuaded her to retire, and Philippa left the room with her, glancing for the last time, as she went, towards the group of gentlemen wearing the silver collar of the Chevaliers of the Order; and in particular at the one Knight of the Order whose shoulder had been turned to her throughout the whole turgid meal.

  Adam also had been conscious for the last hour of Francis Crawford, and of the table with the Scottish Commissioners at which he had been sitting. Through all the meaningless vows of the ceremony you could see, if you knew, the anger simmering behind the nine correct faces: but at least up to now the ritual had been ecclesiastical, and familiar.

  Here, the perfunctory tinsel was more apparent. Here, the triumph of the six brothers de Guise was quite tangible.

  It had been Lymond who had taken in hand, after
a moment, the shiftless, fraying web of small talk, aided quickly by Reid, and a little later, quietly by James Stewart. If they could not rejoice, at least they should not look like men stricken by the occasion.

  It was accepted that this was a court which enjoyed, whatever the excuse, performing before its inferiors. The gentlemen in bright satin robes, having finished their meal—not lavish, but quite satisfactory—were gathered now at one end of the room and expected to assimilate, dazzled, the grace of blue blood: its wealth and its superiority. And from the masques, the ballads, the mummeries to be impressed, once and for all, with the splendour and consequence of this marriage which, with his usual care for their happiness, their monarch and his seigneurs had arranged for them.

  First, the princesses danced; the long, sinuous line led by the Queen of Scots and the King’s daughter, Madame Elizabeth. Then, using for dressing-room the gilded Chamber of Pleas, the court proceeded, for two hours, to entertain themselves and their guests with a Triumph, as several Aldermen ringingly said, greater than that of Caesar.

  Tact had solved the sartorial problems of the Seven Planets: Mercury’s wand bore a snake which looked like silver, even if it was painted hemp, and all sang the verse written for them with fervour and even some accuracy. The children of France, their exhaustion stiffened by arrogance, rode without mishap the twelve willow palfreys, trailing housings of gold and silver.

  The white chariot horses did not flinch under the mouths of the clarions, and the singing by each crew, apostrophizing the Dauphin, was such that the noise from their audience abated a little, and faded. ‘O Mars, filz de Mars!…’